Mission Statement

The mission of the Clinical Research Core of the Brain and Spinal Injury Center is to improve the understanding of primary and secondary brain injury in neurocritical care and to provide a venue for clinical testing of new treatments for acute brain and spinal cord injury.

General overview and areas of focus

The research conducted through the Clinical Core focuses on understanding the role of advanced neuromonitoring of secondary brain injury in the neurocritical care management of patients with acute brain injury and on clinical trials of new treatments. Ongoing efforts include:

Applied research using clinically available parenchymal brain tissue oxygen and cerebral blood probes which quantitatively and continuously measure cerebral metabolic parameters. Emphasis is also on “bedside to bench” translation in which basic studies are made more clinically relevant based on observations from clinical care and clinical research.

Critical care bioinformatics to address emerging issues of intensive care data acquisition, storage, analysis, and clinical utility. This is accomplished through a collaborative effort with the UC Berkeley Department of Computer Science and Intel Corporation and is funded through a University of California Discovery Grant.